We have new books nearly every day.
If you would like a news letter once a week or once a month fill out this form and we will give you a summary of the books for that week or month by email.

﻿Title: Why We Are at War : Messages to the Congress January to April 1917
Author: Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
Copyright Status: Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook. See comments about copyright issues at end of book.
*** Start of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "Why We Are at War : Messages to the Congress January to April 1917" ***
This book is indexed by ISYS Web Indexing system to allow the reader find any word or number within the document.
WHY WE ARE AT WAR
Messages to the Congress January to April, 1917 by Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States, with the President's proclamation of war
April 6, 1917 and his message to the American people April 15, 1917.
Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London.
Published May, 1917
CONTENTS
I. A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE
Message to the Senate, January 22, 1917.
II. THE SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH GERMANY
Message to the Congress, February 3, 1917.
III. REQUEST FOR A GRANT OF POWER
Message to the Congress, February 26, 1917.
IV. WE MUST ACCEPT WAR
Message to the Congress, April 2, 1917.
V. A STATE OF WAR
The President's Proclamation of April 6, 1917.
VI. "SPEAK, ACT, AND SERVE TOGETHER"
Message to the American people, April 15, 1917.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
This book presents in convenient form the memorable messages to the
Congress read by President Wilson in January, February, and April,
1917. They should be read together, for only in this way is it
possible to appreciate both the forbearance and the logic of events
reflected in these consecutive chapters of history. While the great
war message of April 2d is obviously the most momentous, its full
significance is not made clear unless it is read as the climax of the
preceding messages and also in connection with the President's
proclamation of a state of war on April 6th and his message to the
American people of April 15th. While the approval of President Wilson
was very naturally requested and obtained for the publication of these
messages in collected form, the Publishers are responsible for the
title and for captions. They have felt that they are rendering a
service of permanent value by collecting and presenting these historic
documents in the same form in which they have published President
Wilson's When a Man Comes to Himself, On Being Human, and
The President of the United States.
I
A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE
Message to the Senate
January 22, 1917
Gentlemen of the Senate:
On the 18th of December last I addressed an identic note to the
Governments of the nations now at war, requesting them to state,
more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of
belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make
peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral
nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts
in constant jeopardy.
The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they were
ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.
ENTENTE REPLY WAS MORE DEFINITE
The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely and have stated,
in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply
details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which
they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory
settlement.
We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall
end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the
international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace.
In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken
for granted that that peace must be followed by some definite concert
of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such
catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind,
every sane and thoughtful man, must take that for granted.
I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that
I owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final
determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you,
without reserve, the thought and purpose that have been taking form in
my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in these days to come
when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the
foundations of peace among the nations.
DECLARES PEACE IS NOT FAR OFF
It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play
no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will
be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by
the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved
practices of their Government, ever since the days when they set up a
new nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it
was and did show mankind the way to liberty.
They cannot, in honor, withhold the service to which they are now
about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe
it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the
conditions under which they will feel free to render it. That service
is nothing less than this--to add their authority and their power to
the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and
justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long
postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should
frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in
asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a
league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.
MUST NOT SERVE SELFISH AIMS
The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to
a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that so far as our
participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned it makes a
great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended.
The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms
which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving,
a peace that will win the approval of mankind; not merely a peace that
will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations
engaged.
We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, but
we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall
be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant, and
our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition
precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it
may be too late.
No covenant of co-operative peace that does not include the peoples of
the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war, and yet
there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join
in guaranteeing.
The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence
and satisfy the principles of the American Governments, elements
consistent with their political faith and the practical convictions
which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken
to defend.
WORLD ALLIANCE IS NECESSARY
I do not mean to say that any American Government would throw any
obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the Governments now at war
might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might
be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the
belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves.
Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely
necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of
the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now
engaged in any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation,
no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it.
If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made
secure by the organized major force of mankind.
The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it
is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question
upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is
this:
Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only for
a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of
power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium
of the new arrangement?
NO VICTORY FOR EITHER SIDE
Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be not only
a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries,
but an organized common peace.
Fortunately, we have received very explicit assurances on this point.
The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one
another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it
was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their
antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be
equally clear to all--may not be the same on both sides of the water.
I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we
understand them to be.
They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.
It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put
my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no
other interpretation was in my thought.
I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft
concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser,
a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted
in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would
leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of
peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.
Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle
of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.
The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as
necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of questions
of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
MUST EQUALIZE RIGHTS OF NATIONS
The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, if it is to
last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must
neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and
small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.
Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual
strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.
Equality of territory or of resources there, of course, cannot be;
nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and
legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or
expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking
now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.
And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights
among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which
does not recognize and accept the principle that Governments derive
all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no
right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to
sovereignty as if they were property.
I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single
example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a
united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth
inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social
development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived
hitherto under the power of Governments devoted to a faith and purpose
hostile to their own.
I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract
political principle which has always been held very dear by those who
have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason
that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me
clearly indispensable--because I wish frankly to uncover realities.
CRUSHED PEOPLES WILL REVOLT
Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will
inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the
convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations
will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will
sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable,
and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where
there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom,
and of right.
So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling
toward a full development of its resources and of its powers should be
assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this
cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by
the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee
which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement
no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the
world's commerce.
And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free.
The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality,
and cooperation.
No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules
of international practice hitherto sought to be established may be
necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in
practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive
for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust
or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them.
The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an
essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not
be difficult to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the
Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement
concerning it.
REQUIRES LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS
It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval
armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping
the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval
armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the
limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation.
Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with
the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if
peace is to come with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace
cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense
of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating
armies are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and
maintained.
The statesmen of the world must plan for peace, and nations must
adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for
war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of
armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and
intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of
nations and of mankind.
I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the
utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the
world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and
utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority among all
the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing
back.
I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course,
as the responsible head of a great Government, and I feel confident
that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to
say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect
speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of
every program of liberty?
I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind
everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their
real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come
already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.
SEES WORLD-WIDE MONROE DOCTRINE
And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of
the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world
in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have
named, I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is
clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no
breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a
fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord
adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world;
that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation
or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its
own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened,
unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net
of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with
influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in
a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with
the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live
their own lives under a common protection.
I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom
of the seas which in international conference after conference
representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of
those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation
of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order
merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.
These are American principles, American policies. We can stand for
no others. And they are also the principles and policies of
forward-looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation,
of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind,
and must prevail.
II
THE SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH GERMANY
Message to the Congress
February 3, 1917
Gentlemen of the Congress:
The Imperial German Government, on the 31st of January, announced to
this Government and to the Governments of the other neutral nations
that on and after the first day of February, the present month, it
would adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all
shipping seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high
seas to which it is clearly my duty to call your attention.
Let me remind the Congress that on the 18th of April last, in view of
the sinking on the 24th of March of the cross-Channel passenger-steamer
Sussex by a German submarine, without summons or warning, and
the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the United
States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed a
note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the following
declaration:
If it is still the purpose of the Imperial German Government to
prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels
of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the
Government of the United States must consider the sacred and
indisputable rules of international law and the universally
recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States
is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it
can pursue. Unless the German Government should now immediately
declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine
warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels the Government
of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic
relations with the German Empire altogether.
GERMANY'S U-BOAT PLEDGE
In reply to this declaration the German Government gave this
Government the following assurances:
The German Government is prepared to do its utmost to confine the
operations of war for the rest of its duration to the fighting
forces of the belligerents, thereby insuring the freedom of the seas,
a principle upon which the German Government believes, now as before,
to be in agreement with the Government of the United States.
The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government
of the United States that the German naval forces have received the
following orders:
In accordance with the general principles of visit and search and
destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law,
such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval
war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving
human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance.
But neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fight for her
existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interest, restrict the use
of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to continue to apply
at will methods of warfare violating the rules of international law.
Such a demand would be incompatible with the character of neutrality,
and the German Government is convinced that the Government of the
United States does not think of making such a demand, knowing that
the Government of the United States has repeatedly declared that it
is determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas
from whatever quarter it has been violated.
HOW THE UNITED STATES REPLIED
To this the Government of the United States replied on the 8th of May,
accepting, of course, the assurances given, but adding:
The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state that
it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Government does not
intend to imply that the maintenance of its newly announced policy
is in any way contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic
negotiations between the Government of the United States and any
other belligerent Government, notwithstanding the fact that certain
passages in the Imperial Government's note of the 4th instant might
appear to be susceptible to that construction. In order, however,
to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the Government of the United
States notifies the Imperial Government that it cannot for a moment
entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion that respect by German
naval authorities for the rights of citizens of the United States
upon the high seas should in any way or in the slightest degree be
made contingent upon the conduct of any other Government affecting
the rights of neutrals and non-combatants. Responsibility in such
matters is single, not joint; absolute, not relative.
To this note of the 8th of May the Imperial German Government made no
reply.
On the 31st of January, the Wednesday of the present week, the German
Ambassador handed to the Secretary of State, along with a formal note,
a memorandum which contains the following statement:
GERMANY'S NEW POLICY
The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Government
of the United States will understand the situation thus forced upon
Germany by the Entente Allies' brutal methods of war and by their
determination to destroy the Central Powers, and that the Government
of the United States will further realize that the now openly
disclosed intentions of the Entente Allies give back to Germany the
freedom of action which she reserved in her note addressed to the
Government of the United States on May 4, 1916.
Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures
of her enemies by forcibly preventing, after February 1, 1917,
in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the eastern
Mediterranean all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and
to France, etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk.
I think that you will agree with me that, in view of this declaration,
which suddenly and without prior intimation of any kind deliberately
withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note
of the 4th of May, 1916, this Government has no alternative consistent
with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course
which, in its note of the 18th of April, 1916, it announced that it
would take in the event that the German Government did not declare and
effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare which it was
then employing and to which it now purposes again to resort.
ALL RELATIONS BROKEN OFF
I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to announce to his
Excellency the German ambassador that all diplomatic relations between
the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the
American ambassador at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn, and, in
accordance with this decision, to hand to his Excellency his passports.
Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the German Government, this
sudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given
this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the
relations of the two Governments, I refuse to believe that it is the
intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have
warned us they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to
believe that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship
between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which
have been exchanged between them and destroy American ships and take
the lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecution of the
ruthless naval program they have announced their intention to adopt.
Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.
WILL PROTECT AMERICAN RIGHTS
If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety and prudent
foresight of their purpose should unhappily prove unfounded, if
American ships and American lives should, in fact, be sacrificed by
their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and
reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious
dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before
the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that
may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in
the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high
seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral
Governments will take the same course.
I do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German
Government. We are the sincere friends of the German people and
earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which speaks
for them. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us until we
are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing more than the
reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish to
serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought
and in action to the immemorial principles of our people which I
sought to express in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago--seek
merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested
life. These are bases of peace, not war. God grant we may not be
challenged to defend them by acts of wilful injustice on the part of
the Government of Germany.
III
REQUEST FOR A GRANT OF POWER
Message to the Congress
February 26, 1917
Gentlemen of the Congress:
I have again asked the privilege of addressing you because we are
moving through critical times, during which it seems to me to be my
duty to keep in close touch with the Houses of Congress so that
neither counsel nor action shall run at cross-purposes between us.
On the 3d of February I officially informed you of the sudden and
unexpected action of the Imperial German Government in declaring its
intention to disregard the promises it had made to this Government in
April last and undertake immediate submarine operations against all
commerce, whether of belligerents or of neutrals, that should seek
to approach Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic coasts of Europe,
or the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean, and to conduct those
operations without regard to the established restrictions of
international practice, without regard to any considerations of
humanity, even, which might interfere with their object.
AMERICAN COMMERCE SUFFERS, BUT OTHER NEUTRALS FARE WORSE
That policy was forthwith put into practice. It has now been in active
exhibition for nearly four weeks. Its practical results are not fully
disclosed. The commerce of other neutral nations is suffering
severely, but not, perhaps, very much more severely than it was
already suffering before the 1st of February, when the new policy of
the Imperial Government was put into operation.
We have asked the co-operation of the other neutral Governments to
prevent these depredations, but I fear none of them has thought it
wise to join us in any common course of action. Our own commerce has
suffered, is suffering, rather in apprehension than in fact, rather
because so many of our ships are timidly keeping to their home ports
than because American ships have been sunk.
Two American vessels have been sunk, the Housatonic and the Lyman M. Law.
The case of the Housatonic, which was carrying foodstuffs consigned
to a London firm, was essentially like the case of the Frye, in which,
it will be recalled, the German Government admitted its liability for
damages, and the lives of the crew, as in the case of the Frye, were
safeguarded with reasonable care.
THE RUTHLESS SINKING OF SCHOONER "LYMAN M. LAW"
The case of the Law, which was carrying lemon-box staves to Palermo,
disclosed a ruthlessness of method which deserves grave condemnation,
but was accompanied by no circumstances which might not have been
expected at any time in connection with the use of the submarine
against merchantmen as the German Government has used it.
In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with regard to
the actual conduct of the German submarine warfare against commerce
and its effects upon our own ships and people is substantially the
same that it was when I addressed you on the 3d of February, except
for the tying up of our shipping in our own ports because of the
unwillingness of our ship-owners to risk their vessels at sea without
insurance or adequate protection, and the very serious congestion of
our commerce which has resulted, a congestion which is growing rapidly
more and more serious every day.
This in itself might presently accomplish, in effect, what the new
German submarine orders were meant to accomplish, so far as we are
concerned. We can only say, therefore, that the overt act which I
have ventured to hope the German commanders would in fact avoid has
not occurred.
SPARED BY CIRCUMSTANCES NOT BY INSTRUCTIONS
But while this is happily true, it must be admitted that there have
been certain additional indications and expressions of purpose on the
part of the German press and the German authorities which have
increased rather than lessened the impression that if our ships and
our people are spared it will be because of fortunate circumstances or
because the commanders of the German submarines which they may happen
to encounter exercise an unexpected discretion and restraint, rather
than because of the instructions under which those commanders are
acting.
It would be foolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the
gravest possibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see
that the necessity for definite action may come at any time, if we are
in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our elementary rights as a
neutral nation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared.
I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the fact that the
expiration of the term of the present Congress is immediately at hand
by constitutional limitation, and that it would in all likelihood
require an unusual length of time to assemble and organize the Congress
which is to succeed it.
MAY NEED THE AUTHORITY TO ACT ANY MOMENT
I feel that I ought, in view of that fact, to obtain from you full and
immediate assurance of the authority which I may need at any moment to
exercise. No doubt I already possess that authority without special
warrant of law by the plain implication of my constitutional duties
and powers, but I prefer in the present circumstances not to act upon
general implication. I wish to feel that the authority and the power
of the Congress are behind me in whatever it may become necessary for
me to do. We are jointly the servants of the people and must act
together and in their spirit, so far as we can divine and interpret it.
No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must defend our commerce
and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying
circumstances with discretion, but with clear and steadfast purpose.
Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen upon the occasion,
if occasion should indeed arise.
Since it has unhappily proved impossible to safeguard our neutral
rights by diplomatic means against the unwarranted infringements they
are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but to
armed neutrality, which we shall know how to maintain and for which
there is abundant American precedent.
NOT CONTEMPLATING WAR, BUT WANTS TO BE READY
It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be necessary to put armed
forces anywhere into action. The American people do not desire it,
and our desire is not different from theirs. I am sure that they will
understand the spirit in which I am now acting, the purpose I hold
nearest my heart, and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I am
anxious that the people of the nations at war also should understand
and not mistrust us.
I hope that I need give no further proofs and assurances than I have
already given throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that
I am the friend of peace, and mean to preserve it for America so long
as I am able.
I am not now proposing or contemplating war, or any steps that lead to
it. I merely request that you will accord me by your own vote and
definite bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in practice
the right of a great people, who are at peace and who are desirous of
exercising none but the rights of peace, to follow the pursuit of
peace in quietness and good-will--rights recognized time out of mind
by all the civilized nations of the world.
No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to war. War can come
only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.
ASKS POWER TO ARM SHIPS AND TO USE OTHER MEANS
You will understand why I can make no definite proposals or forecasts
of action now, and must ask for your supporting authority in the most
general terms. The form in which action may become necessary cannot
yet be foreseen. I believe that the people will be willing to trust
me to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity
and good faith that they have themselves displayed throughout these
trying months; and it is in that belief that I request that you will
authorize me to supply our merchant-ships with defensive arms should
that become necessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ
any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and
adequate to protect our ships and our people in their legitimate and
peaceful pursuits of the seas.
I request also that you will grant me at the same time, along with
the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me to provide adequate
means of protection where they are lacking, including adequate
insurance against the present war risks.
I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of our
people on the seas, but you will not be misled as to my main thought,
the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and
weight.
CIVILIZATION AT STAKE IN ATTACK ON HUMAN RIGHTS
It is not of material interest merely that we are thinking. It is,
rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life
itself. I am thinking not only of the rights of Americans to go and
come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of
something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking
of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.
My theme is of those great principles of compassion and of protection
which mankind has sought to throw about human lives--the lives of
non-combatants, the lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping the
industrial processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of women
and children, and of those who supply the labor which ministers to
their sustenance.
We are speaking of no selfish material rights, but of rights which our
hearts support, and whose foundation is that righteous passion for
justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, of state,
and of mankind must rest, and upon the ultimate base of our existence
and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American principles at
his heart hesitating to defend these things.
IV
WE MUST ACCEPT WAR
Message to the Congress
April 2, 1917
Gentlemen of the Congress:
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there
are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made
immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally
permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.
On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on
and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside
all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink
every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain
and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports
controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That
had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in
the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had
somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity
with its promise then given to us that passenger-boats should not be
sunk, and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which
its submarines might seek to destroy when no resistance was offered or
escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least
a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats.
The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved
in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel
and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.
GERMANY'S RUTHLESS POLICY
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every
kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their
destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom
without warning, and without thought of help or mercy for those on
board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of
belligerents. Even hospital-ships and ships carrying relief to the
sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were
provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German
Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of
identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or
of principle.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would,
in fact, be done by any Government that had hitherto subscribed to
the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its
origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and
observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion, and
where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage
has that law been built up with meager enough results, indeed, after
all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear
view at least of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded.
This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the
plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which
it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ as
it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of
humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to
underlie the intercourse of the world.
I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction
of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children engaged in
pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid
for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.
GERMAN WARFARE AGAINST MANKIND
The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against
mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very
deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and
friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the
same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all
mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.
The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of
counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and
our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right,
of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought
that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our
right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to
keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality,
it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect
outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against
merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their
attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would
defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving
chase upon the open sea.
It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, indeed,
to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention.
They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.
The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at
all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the
defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned
their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed
guards which we have placed on our merchant-ships will be treated as
beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be.
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances
and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it
is likely to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically
certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the
effectiveness of belligerents.
There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making:
we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred
rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated.
The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs;
they reach out to the very roots of human life.
BELLIGERENCY THRUST UPON US
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the
step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves,
but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty,
I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial
German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the
Government and people of the United States. That it formally accept
the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it and that
it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough
state of defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its
resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and
end the war.
WHAT THIS WILL INVOLVE
What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost
practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the Governments
now at war with Germany, and as incident to that the extension to
those Governments of the most liberal financial credits in order that
our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs.
It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material
resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the
incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most
economical and efficient way possible.
It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all
respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of
dealing with the enemy's submarines.
It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the
United States already provided for by law in case of war at least
500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle
of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of
subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may
be needed and can be handled in training.
It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to
the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be
sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation. I say
sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems to
me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be
necessary entirely on money borrowed.
It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far
as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be
likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast
loans.
In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be
accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of
interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the
equipment of our own military forces with the duty--for it will be a
very practical duty--of supplying the nations already at war with
Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by
our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in
every way to be effective there.
I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive
departments of the Government, for the consideration of your
committees measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I
have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them
as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the
Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and
safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.
OUR MOTIVES AND OBJECTS
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be
very clear and make very clear to all the world what our motives and
our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual
and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and
I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or
clouded by them.
I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I
addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had
in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the
26th of February.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and
the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic
power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples
of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will
henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the
world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic Governments
backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will,
not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality
in such circumstances.
We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that
the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done
shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are
observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse
that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their
previous knowledge or approval.
It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the
old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers
and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of
little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their
fellow-men as pawns and tools.
Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set
the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs
which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such
designs can be successfully worked only under cover and where no one has
the right to ask questions.
Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may
be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the
light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully
guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily
impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full
information concerning all the nation's affairs.
PEACE THROUGH FREE PEOPLES
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be
a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its
vitals away, the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they
would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its
very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any
narrow interest of their own.
Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening
things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?
Russia was known by those who know it best to have been always in fact
democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all
the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural
instinct, their habitual attitude toward life.
Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as
it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in
fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose; and now it has been
shaken and the great, generous Russian people have been added, in all
their native majesty and might, to the forces that are fighting for
freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner
for a league of honor.
One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities
and even our offices of Government with spies and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council,
our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war
began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact
proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more
than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating
the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official
agents of the Imperial German Government accredited to the Government
of the United States.
Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them
because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or
purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as
ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish
designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people
nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us
at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us
and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience.
That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the
intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent
evidence.
A CHALLENGE OF HOSTILE PURPOSE
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know
that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a
friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying
in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no
assured security for the democratic Governments of the world.
We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to
liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation
to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now
that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to
fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation
of its peoples, the German people included; for the rights of nations
great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their
way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for
democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of
political liberty.
We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of
the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have
been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can
make them.
Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish objects,
seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations
as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud
punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be
fighting for.
I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the Imperial
Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or
challenged us to defend our right and our honor.
The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed avowed its unqualified
indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine
warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German
Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government
to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently accredited to this
Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary;
but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against
citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty,
for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations
with the authorities at Vienna.
OPPOSITION TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT
FRIENDSHIP TOWARD THE GERMAN PEOPLE
We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because
there are no other means of defending our rights.
It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents
in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus,
not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury
or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an
irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of
humanity and of right and is running amuck.
We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people,
and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of
intimate relations of mutual advantage between us--however hard it may
be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from
our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through all
these bitter months because of that friendship--exercising a patience
and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.
We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship
in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women
of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our
life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are, in fact,
loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test.
They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had
never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to
stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a
different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty it will be
dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its
head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without
countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.
RIGHT MORE PRECIOUS THAN PEACE
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress,
which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be,
many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful
thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most
terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be
in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we
shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our
hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority
to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties
of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and
make the world itself at last free.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything
that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who
know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her
blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she
can do no other.
V
A STATE OF WAR
The President's Proclamation of
April 6, 1917
Whereas, The Congress of the United States, in the exercise of the
constitutional authority vested in them, have resolved by joint
resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, bearing date
this day, that a state of war between the United States and the
Imperial German Government, which has been thrust upon the United
States, is hereby formally declared;
Whereas, It is provided by Section 4067 of the Revised Statutes as
follows:
Whenever there is declared a war between the United States and
any foreign nation or Government, or any invasion or predatory
incursion is perpetrated, attempted or threatened against
the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or
Government, and the President makes public proclamation of the
event, all natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of a hostile
nation or Government being male of the age of fourteen years and
upward who shall be within the United States and not actually
naturalized shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained,
secured, and removed as alien enemies.
The President is authorized in any such event, by his proclamation
thereof or other public acts, to direct the conduct to be observed on
the part of the United States toward the aliens who become so liable;
the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject
and in what cases and upon what security their residence shall be
permitted and to provide for the removal of those who, not being
permitted to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to
depart therefrom, and to establish any such regulations which are
found necessary in the premises and for the public safety;
Whereas, By Sections 4068, 4069, and 4070 of the Revised Statutes
further provision is made relative to alien enemies;
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of
America, do hereby proclaim to all whom it may concern that a state of
war exists between the United States and the Imperial German
Government, and I do specially direct all officers, civil or military,
of the United States that they exercise vigilance and zeal in the
discharge of the duties incident to such a state of war, and I do,
moreover, earnestly appeal to all American citizens that they, in
loyal devotion to their country, dedicated from its foundation to the
principles of liberty and justice, uphold the laws of the land and
give undivided and willing support to those measures which may be
adopted by the constitutional authorities in prosecuting the war to a
successful issue and in obtaining a secure and just peace;
And acting under and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the
Constitution of the United States and the said sections of the Revised
Statutes:
I do hereby further proclaim and direct that the conduct to be
observed on the part of the United States toward all natives,
citizens, denizens, or subjects of Germany, being male, of the age of
fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and
not actually naturalized, who for the purpose of this proclamation and
under such sections of the Revised Statutes are termed alien enemies,
shall be as follows:
All alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace toward the
United States and to refrain from crime against the public safety
and from violating the laws of the United States and of the States
and Territories thereof, and to refrain from actual hostility or
giving information, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United
States, and to comply strictly with the regulations which are
hereby or which may be from time to time promulgated by the
President, and so long as they shall conduct themselves in
accordance with law they shall be undisturbed in the peaceful
pursuit of their lives and occupations and be accorded the
consideration due to all peaceful and law-abiding persons,
except so far as restrictions may be necessary for their own
protection and for the safety of the United States, and toward
such alien enemies as conduct themselves in accordance with law
all citizens of the United States are enjoined to preserve the
peace and to treat them with all such friendliness as may be
compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the United States.
And all alien enemies who fail to conduct themselves as so enjoined,
in addition to all other penalties prescribed by law, shall be
liable to restraint or to give security or to remove and depart
from the United States in the manner prescribed by Sections 4069
and 4070 of the Revised Statutes and as prescribed in the regulations
duly promulgated by the President.
And, pursuant to the authority vested in me, I hereby declare and
establish the following regulations, which I find necessary in the
premises and for the public safety:
First. An alien enemy shall not have in his possession at any time
or place any firearms, weapons, or implement of war, or component
parts thereof; ammunition, Maxim or other silencer, arms or explosives
or material used in the manufacture of explosives.
Second. An alien enemy shall not have in his possession at any
time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft or wireless apparatus,
or any form of signaling device, or any form of cipher code or any
paper, document or book written or printed in cipher, or in which
there may be invisible writing.
Third. All property found in the possession of an alien enemy in
violation of the foregoing regulations shall be subject to seizure
by the United States.
Fourth. An alien enemy shall not approach or be found within one-half
of a mile of any Federal or State fort, camp, arsenal, aircraft
station, Government or naval vessel, navy-yard, factory or workshop
for the manufacture of munitions of war or of any products for the
use of the army or navy.
Fifth. An alien enemy shall not write, print or publish any attack
or threat against the Government or Congress of the United States,
or either branch thereof, or against the measures or policy of the
United States, or against the persons or property of any person
in the military, naval or civil service of the United States,
or of the States or Territories, or of the District of Columbia,
or of the municipal governments therein.
Sixth. An alien enemy shall not commit or abet any hostile acts
against the United States, or give information, aid or comfort to
its enemies.
Seventh. An alien enemy shall not reside in or continue to reside in,
to remain in or enter any locality which the President may from time
to time designate by an executive order as a prohibitive area in
which residence by an alien enemy shall be found by him to constitute
a danger to the public peace and safety of the United States except
by permit from the President and except under such limitations or
restrictions as the President may prescribe.
Eighth. An alien enemy whom the President shall have reasonable
cause to believe to be aiding or about to aid the enemy, or to be
at large to the danger of the public peace or safety of the United
States, or to have violated or to be about to violate any of these
regulations, by executive order, and shall not remove therefrom
without permit, or shall depart from the United States if so required
by the President.
Ninth. No alien enemy shall depart from the United States until he
shall have received such permit as the President shall prescribe,
or except under order of a Court, Judge or Justice, under Sections
4069 and 4070 of the Revised Statutes.
Tenth. No alien enemy shall land in or enter the United States
except under such restrictions and at such places as the President
may prescribe.
Eleventh. If necessary to prevent violation of the regulations,
all alien enemies will be obliged to register.
Twelfth. An alien enemy whom there may be reasonable cause to
believe to be aiding or about to aid the enemy, or to be at large
to the danger of the public peace or safety, or who violates or
who attempts to violate or of whom there is reasonable grounds to
believe that he is about to violate any regulation to be promulgated
by the President or any criminal law of the United States or of
the States or Territories thereof, will be subject to summary arrest
by the United States, by the United States Marshal or his deputy or
such other officers as the President shall designate, and to
confinement in such penitentiary, prison, jail, military camp,
or other place of detention as may be directed by the President.
This proclamation and the regulations herein contained shall extend
and apply to all land and water, continental or insular, in any way
within the jurisdiction of the United States.
VI
"SPEAK, ACT AND SERVE TOGETHER"
Message to the American People
April 15, 1917
My Fellow-Countrymen:
The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war
for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so
many problems of national life and action which call for immediate
consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address
to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them.
We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are
about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest
parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is
not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are
fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the
rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world.
To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote
ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material
advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the
level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great
the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of
capacity and service and self-sacrifice it involves.
WHAT WE MUST DO
These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides
fighting--the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless:
We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our
seamen, not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom
we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we
shall be fighting.
We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to
the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will
every day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields
and our mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and
equip our own forces on land and sea, but also to clothe and support
our people, for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer
work; to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are
co-operating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there
in raw material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in
the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which
to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for wornout
railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling-stock to
take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses,
cattle for labor and for military service; everything with which the
people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually
supplied themselves, but cannot now afford the men, the materials or
the machinery to make.
GREATER EFFICIENCY
It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms,
in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more
prolific and more efficient than ever, and that they must be more
economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements
of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the
men and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these
things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace
and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the
battle-field or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country,
men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international,
service army--a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the
nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men
everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise
liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused
from that service and assigned to the fundamental sustaining work of
the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of
the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire.
I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers
of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of
our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an
abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of
an adequate food-supply, especially for the present year, is
superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the
peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have
embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low.
Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace
shall have come, both our own people and a large proportion of the
people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FARMERS
Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure rests
the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the nation not
count upon them to omit no step that will increase the production of
their land or that will bring about the most effectual co-operation in
the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is
of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done,
and done immediately, to make sure of large harvests. I call upon
young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to
accept and act upon this duty--to turn in hosts to the farms and make
certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter.
I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant
foodstuffs, as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no
better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation
of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great
scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting
for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will
be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.
The Government of the United States and the Governments of the several
States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything possible to
assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate
force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest-time, and the
means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as
well as of the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade
shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it, and there shall
be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food-supply by those
who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to
demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy, and we shall not fall
short of it!
THE DUTY OF MIDDLEMEN
This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are
handling our foodstuffs or the raw materials of manufacture or the
products of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will be
especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service,
efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects
all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite
shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an
eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who
enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall
confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of
every sort and station.
THE MEN OF THE RAILWAYS
To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be
managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the
arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense
responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no
obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the
merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service,"
and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends
upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the
seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of
those that go down must be supplied, and supplied at once. To the
miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does: the work of the
world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are
helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Service Army. The
manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks
to him to speed and perfect every process; and I want only to remind
his employees that their service is absolutely indispensable and is
counted on by every man who loves the country and its liberties.
Let me suggest also that every one who creates or cultivates a garden
helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the
nations; and that every housewife who practises strict economy puts
herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time
for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and
extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of
careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate
of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or
forgiven for ignoring.
THE SUPREME TEST
In the hope that this statement of the needs of the nation and of the
world in this hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it
comes and remind all who need reminder of the solemn duties of a time
such as the world has never seen before, I beg that all editors and
publishers everywhere will give as prominent publication and as wide
circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest also to
all advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a very
substantial and timely service to the country if they would give it
widespread repetition. And I hope that clergymen will not think the
theme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homily
from their pulpits.
The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act and
serve together!
*** End of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "Why We Are at War : Messages to the Congress January to April 1917" ***
Doctrine Publishing Corporation provides digitized public domain materials.
Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians.
This effort is time consuming and expensive, so in order to keep providing
this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties,
including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Doctrine Publishing
Corporation's ISYS search for use by individuals, and we request that you
use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort
to Doctrine Publishing's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a
large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of
public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Keep it legal - Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for
ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because
we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States,
that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries.
Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we
can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is
allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Doctrine Publishing
ISYS search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world.
Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About ISYS® Search Software
Established in 1988, ISYS Search Software is a global supplier of enterprise
search solutions for business and government. The company's award-winning
software suite offers a broad range of search, navigation and discovery
solutions for desktop search, intranet search, SharePoint search and embedded
search applications. ISYS has been deployed by thousands of organizations
operating in a variety of industries, including government, legal, law
enforcement, financial services, healthcare and recruitment.